This is my rain tent design. It both creates a dry space underneath, and collects rain water. My novel innovation is a soft fabric gutter. I've looked around the internet and have been unable to find anyone else with this design, so it appears to be my own invention!
A tent costs at least 10 times less than a water maker, doesn't require a lot of energy to operate, doesn't have expensive parts or tricky maintenance.
And it also keeps you dry when it rains, which a water maker doesn't!
On board Yes Let's I have 6x 20L jerrycans. That's 120 litres, and lasts me a month. If I use just the back half of the tent, that's about 20 square meters of catchment. 1mm of rain falling on 1 square meter is 1 litre so I could theoretically fill my tanks with just 6mm of rain. (that would require switching the tanks just as they fill etc) however, average monthly rainfall, anywhere in New Zealand, is a lot more than that. So for rain catchment, this is waaaay more than enough! but a big tent is nice for the dry space.
A big tent gets blown by the wind a lot, but since my catamaran can dry out, I can park in a much more sheltered spot than I could with a keeler, so this isn't a problem. On a keeler a smaller tent that just covered the cockpit would work, and still collect sufficient water.
12 сен 2024
